The coronavirus is crushing the biggest names in U.S.
air travel. In 2019 U.S.
airlines carried an estimated 926 million passengers a 43
percent increase from 2003.
But that demand hit a wall in March 2020 after U.S.
airlines reported an enormous drop in bookings amid the
spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
Health officials say air travel is causing viruses and
bacteria to spread around the world faster than ever
before. Air travel does hasten the speed with which
infectious disease spreads around the world.
Airplanes are efficient vectors for germs and bacteria and
viruses to spread.
The dawn of air travel meant that pandemics can happen,
they can happen much more quickly.
Airlines at the center of the epidemic have come under
intense scrutiny for the safety and cleanliness of their
cabins. Demand is just falling off and it's alarming.
This is the worst crisis that he has ever seen in the
airline industry. Airlines are going to stop flying.
An airline without revenues is toast.
Delta Airlines plans to reduce seat capacity by 70 percent
and announced the carriers second quarter revenue would be
$10 billion less than the same period the year prior.
American, United, JetBlue and Southwest are also parking
some of their planes, freezing hiring and asking employees
to take unpaid time off.
To combat the pandemic airlines have imposed new safety
regulations and are using enhanced cleaning techniques
inside their plane cabins.
But is it enough? And how do airlines keep their planes
clean?
Airlines face an uphill battle keeping their planes clean.
Mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria and yellow fever
can sneak aboard planes.
To combat bugs and other pests the World Health
Organization and the International Civil Aviation
Organization have advised airlines to use aircraft
disinsection, a term that refers to the process of
spraying an aircraft cabin with insecticide while
passengers are on board or after they've disembarked.
But it's primarily the job of the cabin cleaning crew to
prepare your seat for its next flight.
Cabin cleaners may be inside a plane for as little as seven
minutes and as long as four hours.
It all depends on the standard set by each individual
airline and the amount of time before the next flight.
Deep cleaning when every inch of the plane is cleaned,
happens overnight when an aircraft is parked at an airport.
Though cleaning standards vary airline to airline, most
carriers follow a few basic procedures.
Cabin cleaners today generally are outfitted with
protective clothing and disposable gloves, similar to what
you see here. A single aisle airplane like the Boeing 737
seats up to 230 passengers and might have between three to
six people cleaning the cabin, plus others cleaning the
galleys and lavatory.
The bigger Boeing 747 has more than 400 seats and there
could be as many as 20 people cleaning the plane.
Depending on the amount of time they have before the next
flight cabin cleaners will pick up trash like used tissues
and half-eaten sandwiches, clean surfaces like tray tables,
seat cushions and lavatories with an anti-bacterial
solution and even vacuum the carpet.
Despite these efforts, some people are so concerned about
germs that they clean their own seats.
In July 2019, Naomi Campbell's YouTube page launched a video
of her airport routine.
U.S.
airlines have some employees who clean their planes but to
save money, the vast majority of cabin cleaning work is
outsourced to dozens of companies across the U.S.
In 2018, nearly two-thirds of cabin cleaners worked for
third-party companies.
Airlines often award contracts to the lowest bidder.
I mean, essentially what the airlines have setup through
contracting is they forced the contractors to compete for
who can provide the service of cabin cleaning, as well as
some of the other airline jobs, at the lowest bid.
And that means who can pay the workers the least to do the
work because that's how the contractors cut their costs.
There are dozens of companies involved in cabin cleaning at
the almost 500 commercial airports across the country.
One of the biggest cabin cleaners is ABM, a facility
management firm and a public company that works with
leading U.S. airlines and cleans more than 1.3 million
planes annually.
In 2019, ABM had aviation revenue of $1 billion, an almost
20 percent increase from 2016.
Aviation revenue at ABM came from cabin cleaning, but also
from other services like parking, passenger assistance and
catering logistics.
In 2015, United Airlines launched United Ground Express, a
subsidiary owned by the carrier that provides customer
service, cargo services and cabin cleaning for some
flights. The other top cabin cleaning companies in the U.S.
are a mix of private and public companies that offer a
range of services from de-icing airplanes to baggage
handling. Those companies include DGS, now known as Unifi
Service, Prospect, Prime Flight, G2 and Menzies Aviation.
U.S. airlines are ramping up their approach to the
coronavirus outbreak, cleaning their cabins more often and
with stronger hospital-grade disinfectants.
Coronavirus spread rapidly around the globe, killing more
than 43,000 people and infecting more than 870,000 as of
April 1, 2020, according to Johns Hopkins University.
According to the CDC, Covid-19, is believed to spread
mainly when people are in close contact with each other and
by respiratory droplets from an infected person who coughs
or sneezes. The virus can survive on a hard surface, such
as plastic for up to 72 hours and on cardboard for up to 24
hours, according to a March 2020 study.
And according to the CDC, new research indicates that
coronavirus RNA, the genetic material of the virus that
causes Covid-19, was found on surfaces of the Princess
Cruise ship up to 17 days after passengers disembarked.
Vicki Hertzberg is a biostatistician and the lead author of
a separate study on how infection can spread aboard an
airplane. She says the odds of coming into contact with an
infected person is relatively low, but transmission
increases when an infected person is sitting in the row in
front of you, the row behind you and the two seats on
either side of you.
What Hertzberg refers to as your "perimeter of risk." Your
probability of infection increases the longer you're in
close proximity with somebody who's infectious and the
place where that's going to make the most difference is if
you're seated closely to them on an airplane.
To keep the air clean as it circulates
most aircraft used by American, Delta and United are
equipped with HEPA filters similar to the ones used in
hospitals that provide a complete air change about 15 to 30
times per hour.
This isn't to be confused with the mist you sometimes see
before takeoff - that's condensation fog caused by the
airplanes air conditioner being switched on.
In response to the pandemic U.S.
airlines started using enhanced cleaning procedures on
planes to combat the spread of the virus.
Since the advent of coronavirus and Covid-19 they've all
elevated what they do.
Some airlines are using fogging systems to disperse
sanitizing spray throughout the cabin.
They have elevated the intensity and strength of the
cleaners that they are using.
Take Delta.
In addition to its normal cleaning program Delta Airlines is
using high-grade EPA registered disinfectant to wipe down
common surface areas in galleys and lavatories.
The airline has also added a fogging process used in many
health care facilities that pushes out an EPA registered
disinfectant on all trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic
inbound flights.
Beginning April 1st, 2020, all of Delta's domestic flights
will undergo the same fogging process overnight.
And by early May every plane in Delta's network will be
fogged before every flight.
American Airlines and United Airlines said they are also
using high-grade disinfectants and multipurpose cleaners on
all touch points, including window shades, armrests and
tray tables. Aircraft that remain overnight at an airport
receive an enhanced cleaning procedure.
United said that because of the coronavirus it will soon
start using an electrostatic fogger, which is essentially a
pump sprayer to disinfect the air and surfaces within the
cabin on all international arrivals into the U.S.
While viruses can live on a surface for hours or days,
bacteria can sometimes survive on surfaces for months.
In 2014, Dimer UVC innovations launched the GermFalcon, a
disinfecting machine for airplane interiors that looks like
a large food and drink cart with wings.
The device is pushed by an operator and uses ultraviolet C
lamps to eliminate germs and bacteria.
The company claims it can kill 99 percent of germs on a
plane in about three minutes.
UVC is proven in hospitals to be effective against all known
disease causing pathogens, that's viruses, that's bacteria
and in hospitals its superbugs.
On airplanes were primarily focused on viruses like
influenza, norovirus, Ebola and right now we're dealing
with coronavirus. According to Kreitenberg, it can take
about 30 to 45 minutes for the GermFalcon to disinfect a
wide-body plane for a narrow-body plane like a Boeing 737
it can take about three minutes.
I'd say it's not just about coronavirus.
I'd say coronavirus is the topic of the day but every year
in America, we deal with the flu season and the flu season
kills tens of thousands of Americans every single year.
Kreitenberg said the company is in the early stages of
working with the airline industry.
So far, the device has disinfected some flights arriving
from China at LAX Airport in early 2020 and is now working
with Paine Field Airport in Seattle to disinfect its
terminals. While
airlines are at the center of the coronavirus epidemic,
cabin cleaning crews are the ones on the front lines.
In March 2020,
more than 600 contracted airport workers at Philadelphia's
airport, including cabin cleaners, were told they were
being laid off amid the coronavirus outbreak.
In 2018, the most recent year this data was made available
there were 12,000 airline cabin cleaners in the U.S., a 10
percent increase from 2001, according to Service Employees
International Union.
Only about a third of cabin cleaners work directly for the
airlines that year.
The median wage for non-airline cabin cleaners was $12.56
in 2018, according to SEIU, almost one percent less than
the median wage in 2001 - and that's not accounting for
inflation. According to Ken Jacobs, the chair of the UC
Berkeley Labor Center, since the early 2000's, cabin
cleaners have seen a decline both in real wages and
benefits. What's happened with the outsourcing is that
pushes a real race to the bottom.
Any airline service firm that wants to increase pay faces
the loss of the contract that they have.
That puts downward pressure on wages and benefits and leads
to high turnover for cabin cleaners.
But despite these issues, cabin cleaning will be a priority
for the airlines in the future, according to analysts.
We're going to come out of this coronavirus crisis with an
elevated focus on hygiene in our homes, in workplaces,
where we go to eat and frankly, at airports and on
airplanes. Passengers won't be as tolerant of dirty planes
and dirty cabins as they were and importantly, their
employees will be as accepting of this.